Web Development

Firefox 4 Beta Now Ready For Testing

By Adrian Bridgwater, January 18, 2011

Developers urged to exploit full support for HTML5 features in Firefox 4 Beta

Browser-centric developers, web designers, developers, and users in general are being urged to put the latest Firesfox 4 Beta through its paces and test for themselves the latest enhancements to the popular browser. Mozilla says that the new release includes faster start-up time, improved bookmarking, and also makes complex animations smoother.

Firefox 4 Beta introduces new features such as App Tabs and Panorama to make it easier and more efficient to navigate the Web. The Mozilla Foundation's official blog says that the idea behind App Tabs is that some web sites are more like applications than web pages, such as Google Docs, webmail, Twitter and web-based feed readers. "These are sites that people often keep open all the time and App Tabs makes that easier and more efficient to do." Creative lead on Firefox Asa Raskin explains that Panorama is designed to make it easier to organize tabs into groups according to their subject matter and importance.

Firefox 4 Beta also includes performance enhancements to make everything faster from start-up time to page-load speed and the performance of web applications and games. Firefox Sync is integrated into the browser with Firefox 4 Beta, giving you access to your Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs, and passwords across computers and smartphones.

Firefox 4 Beta also enables developers to create fun web apps and websites. With full support for HTML5 features in Firefox 4 Beta, developers can create new ways for people to enjoy the web. This includes WebM and HD video, 3D graphic rendering with WebGL, hardware acceleration and the Mozilla Audio API to help create visual experiences for sound.

"We continue to improve and polish Firefox 4 Beta to ensure we deliver an awesome experience to our 400 million users around the world. We couldn’t do this without the help of our beta testers and their feedback. Please continue to test Firefox 4 Beta on your favorite websites and report issues with anything from games, video and music to graphics and forms through the Feedback button on the browser. We want to hear how we can improve the features of Firefox 4 Beta and performance on specific sites," said Firefox director of product platform management Chris Blizzard.

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